Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) routers currently support static and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Clientless Internet Protocol Services (CLIPS) subscribers (e.g., virtualized Internet Protocol over Ethernet (IpoE) subscribers). These mechanisms provide service selection to subscribers over non-channelized media and traffic accounting for such subscribers to service providers. Static CLIPS creates circuits (virtual channels) statically based upon manual configuration while DHCP CLIPS dynamically creates circuits based upon the DHCP protocol.
To illustrate, DHCP CLIPS is a mechanism to create a circuit (virtual channel) on demand and it is based upon the DHCP protocol. As a new subscriber negotiates an IP address (using DHCP), a circuit gets created for the subscriber on the BNG. So DHCP CLIPS is tightly coupled with the DHCP protocol.
FIG. 1 illustrates an example flow diagram of a prior art system using static CLIPS. At block 105, traffic is received at the BNG. At block 110, static CLIPS is used when a source IP address of traffic matches a pre-manual configured circuit. At block 115, the traffic is passed.
FIG. 2 illustrates an example flow diagram of a prior art system using dynamic DHCP CLIPS. At block 205, traffic is received at the BNG. At block 210, if traffic is a DHCP packet, the system processes a DHCP protocol message exchange and creates a new subscriber circuit. At block 215, the traffic is passed on a new circuit.
Current CLIPS functionality is dependent on either manual configuration or using the DHCP protocol. These dependencies limit its usefulness in situations where dynamic subscriber classification without DHCP protocol is desired. For example, a client may be assigned an IP address in a secured access network before reaching a BNG. Because an IP address is already assigned to the subscriber, the DHCP protocol is not used. In this case, the current CLIPS feature cannot be used to dynamically classify the subscriber for service selection and traffic accounting.
Thus, a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art systems, designs, and processes as discussed above.